Log in

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
At least 1 post per week (frequently 2 or 3): Primarily Epic Card Game strategy articles. Game reviews and other game-related posts are possible as well.

Sample Epic Dark Draft 3/16/16 (Paul)

Foreword

I’ve been playing board and card games with Tom for about seven years, if I’ve counted right. He introduced me to Epic a couple months ago. Him telling me it was his favorite game was enough to pique my interest, and I quickly came to really enjoy the unique facets of the game.

Dark drafting is one of the ways I can beat Tom. The randomness makes every draw fun, almost like opening a present to see what you’ll get. It can be frustrating to pass good cards to your opponent, but of course, that comes back at you. Overall, it’s very satisfying to play this format and come up with a plan for a deck as you build it based on draws.

Round 1

Thoughts:Surprise Attack is wonderful. You draw AND can play a card as if it had ambush. Works with any deck, not just Wild.

I’m guessing Tom will pick Banishment and Flash Fire. Both are usable in many situations, and Flash Fire can be great for wiping token champions and some of the nice cards that have one or two defense.

Thoughts: No question. Makes me wonder what Tom picked. Hurricane has worked out a lot for me as a board clearer. It’s great if you have something like Kong that won’t get cleared. And Fireball can board clear or get rid of something pesky at 0-cost.

Thoughts: Does he want me to win…? In the past, I would have picked Rampaging Wurm, but I’ve come to learn how nice Succubus is. I feel like I have enough wild to use Strafing Dragon‘s loyalty ability.

Round 8

Thoughts: Difficult choice, but T-Rex is the best one. Corpse Taker can be amazing, and Dark Assassin would be an almost certain pick if I knew I could pull off the loyalty (which would allow me to break target champion when I play it).

Thoughts: I’ve been getting lots of awesome cards. I think this is clearly the best choice. “Unbreakable on your turn” is SUPER annoying to play against. Flame Strike can finish off a champion or player.

Thoughts:Mighty Blow I’ll have to watch out for. Palace Guard is really good: you know they can’t bring back the banished champion from their discard pile.

The thing with Mighty Blow and Angelic Protector is that they are definitely situational. True, the card draw is always nice, but banishing a champion and getting a decently powerful champion yourself comes up a lot. And I’ve passed some things that I can expect to want to banish.

Thoughts: I’ll bet a lot of money on what Tom picks here! It’s really annoying to play against Psionic Assault (especially if you can’t banish it from your opponent’s discard pile). Time Walker is great with the loyalty.

I partly can’t let Tom get Steel Golem, and another strong part likes the fact that it’s powerful and untargetable. You never realize how many cards say “target” on them until you are trying to get rid of a Steel Golem!

I’m excited to play this deck. I got a bunch of cards that I really enjoy playing, both from my first picks and Tom’s passes to me. I feel well-prepared to counter stuff Tom lays on me, as well as to have sufficient draw during the game.

Conclusion

I really enjoy dark drafting. It’s fun to have a little idea of what your opponent could take, and guess based on that.

It was particularly fun to keep track of what I thought Tom would pick, and compare notes after we played with our decks. (Tom’s draft can be found here:Sample Epic Dark Draft 3/16/16 (Tom).) When we played these games, it helped me improve to be thinking about what cards Tom might have chosen. It was helpful to discuss at the end, both to learn more of Tom’s playing style, as well as what he thought would work in these drafts.

I wouldn’t encourage you to take notes as meticulous as these every time you play (but if you have a more efficient way to do so, please let us know in the comments below).

So overall, I would recommend (1) making sure you have some idea of faction investment as you draft; (2) think about important things that your deck may be strong or weak at, like card draw, removal, and slow/fast cards; and (3) keep in mind specific cards your opponent is almost guaranteed to have selected. I don’t think most people will remember everything, but it can be pretty easy to keep track of likely combinations that you can anticipate playing against.

About the Guest Author

Paul is an amateur board and card game enthusiast. His favorites are CardsAgainstHumanity, the Battlestar Galactica board game, and Bananagrams.

Epic has made his way into his top ten, and is interested in playing with more people. You can learn more about Paul on his website.